Which method to use to get content from index with a_a_f?

Ruby Apps Ferret
1

Hi everybody,

After staring at the a_a_f API for quite sometime now, I decided it’s
time to ask…

Which method should I use to get content from the index without using
highlight? Consider the following controller action:

def preview
if params[:search].blank? # normal case
@text = @myfile. # which method do I use here to get the :text from
the index???
else # if we come from the search results page
@text = @myfile.highlight(params[:search], { :field => :text,
:excerpt_length => :all, :pre_tag => ‘[highlight]’, :post_tag =>
‘[/highlight]’ })
end
end

I didn’t store my text in the database, only in the index. When I’m
coming from a search I use the highlight method, so the term I searched
for gets highlighted, but how do I get the text from the index in a
‘normal case’. The highlight method feels inappropriate, because I don’t
want to highlight anything. I don’t see what other method to use.

Thanks in advance!

Mischa.

2

On Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 11:22:39PM +0100, Mischa B. wrote:

@text = @myfile. # which method do I use here to get the :text from

for gets highlighted, but how do I get the text from the index in a
‘normal case’. The highlight method feels inappropriate, because I don’t
want to highlight anything. I don’t see what other method to use.

that’s because there is currently no aaf way to do this.

You can however get a handle to the Ferret::Index instance by calling
YourModel.ferret_index (or YourModel.aaf_index.ferret_index if you’re
using the latest aaf trunk). Now you can query this index instance for
your primary key with something in the lines of “id:#{self.id}”, and
then
retrieve field values via the standard ferret api.

Note that this won’t work with a remote index, since the index in this
case is not necessarily on the same machine and therefore cannot be
accessed via Ferret’s own API.

I already started thinking about a way to integrate this into the API,
maybe via an option to find_by_contents that allows to specify the
fields you want to fetch directly from the index. That could then be
combined with lazy-loading of the ‘real’ record from DB for more speed
when it comes to live-searches and the like.

Jens

–
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D-01069 Dresden Fax +49 351 46766 66

3

Thanks for the tip! I expected aaf to have a method for this, but the
way you describe works fine.

I’m doing it like this now:
@text = Myfile.ferret_index[@myfile.document_number][:text]